I ordinarily wouldn’t be writing here about the death of a highly controversial former Secretary of Defense, no matter how crucial his role in history. However, the death of Robert S. McNamara is very much worth a brief post even in a mostly lighthearted entertainment blog because of his involvement in one of Errol Morris’s best documentarys, 2004’s “The Fog of War.” Here’s a clip that might be a bit of a bummer for a Monday after a holiday weekend, but it raises more important questions in four minutes than I could write in a month of really serious posts.
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In a really creepy bit of timing, The House Next Door has just posted a lengthy (I’ve only read about half, so far) but I’d say very worthwhile consideration of documentarian Morris’s entire film career by Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard, including an appropriately skeptical consideration of McNamara’s attempts at self-rehabilitation in this film. You can also see if I was one of those critics Ed and Jason mention who took him at face value in my review from late 2003.
